Monday, December 2, 2013

Advent

Advent, the
four-week period preceding Christmas, began yesterday, December 1. Incidentally,
the first day of Advent, always a Sunday, marks the first day of a new Christian
year even though the Church observes the visitation of the angel to Mary on
March 25, the feast of the Annunciation to Mary by the angel Gabriel, nine
months before the commemoration of Jesus' birth on December 25.

In
Advent, Christians prepare for their annual celebration of Jesus' birth and
look forward to Christ coming again. The stories of Jesus' birth, found in only
two of the four Biblical biographies of Jesus (the gospels of Matthew and Luke),
tell very different versions of that story; sometimes the two even include
sharply contradictory details. Thus, these stories are clearly not historical
accounts but theological narratives by which the authors hoped to share their interpretation
of the Jesus event with readers. Subsequent Ethical Musings postings, closer to
Christmas, will unpack some of the contemporary meaning and relevance of these
stories.

Similarly,
the Biblical materials that many people use to discern God's plan for the
future (and perhaps God's timetable for that plan) are mostly descriptions of
what the authors had personally experienced and not prophecy, e.g., the Revelation
of John is a description of early Roman persecution of Christians and not
prophecy about the future. The Bible's authors used symbols and the future tense
to disguise their real message, widely regarded as subversive, from the
authorities. Sadly, their technique has also confused generations of Christians.
For an example of how these stories can be meaningful, cf. Ethical Musings Rethinking
eschatology (the study of end times).

Some years
ago, I read this marvelous story:

A
traveler arrived in a village in the middle of winter to find an old man
shivering in the cold outside the synagogue. 'What are you doing here?' asked
the traveler.

'I'm
waiting for the coming of the Messiah.'

'That
must be an important job,' said the traveler. 'The community must pay you a lot
of money.'

'No,
not at all. They just let me sit here on this bench. Once in a while someone
gives me a little food.'

'That
must be hard. But even if they don't pay you, they must honor you for doing
this important work.'

'No,
not at all they think that I'm crazy.'

'I
don't understand. They don't pay you; they don't respect you. You sit in the
cold, shivering and hungry. What kind of job is this?'

Although
the story is Jewish, the old man might easily have been a Jewish Christian awaiting
the Messiah's return. The futility of the man's commitment, and the community's
lack of support for the man and their lack of belief in the Messiah's coming,
mirrors the lip service many Christians pay to traditional theological affirmations
that Christ will come again, e.g., as found in the Nicene Creed and Eucharistic
Prayers in the Book of Common Prayer.

An
alternative and more credible explanation of the Biblical hope of Maranatha! (Come again!) is one of a
realized eschatology. That is, when we meet God in this world, then we
experience Jesus' return in our thoughts, our relationships, and our actions. The
fulfillment of creation is not some miraculous deed that God will unilaterally
perform, intervening in the cosmos and disrupting what is happening. The
fulfillment of creation will result from people (and all creation!) living into
the future in hopeful and loving obedience to the Creator.